365 days... plus some.

I have been working for myself for an entire year. (Plus some days.) I was literally crying this morning because I booked a family session and got two wedding inquiries. Sometimes I'm still in shock that I have this life that I have built with my own two hands. I will probably never stop being in awe of it. I have learned so much in the last year, and what better place to share all of that than here?

Probably the number one thing I learned last year is that the in-betweens are hard. After my fall event with Next Stop Kids Shop last year had a whopping ZERO people show up, and then when I got sick shortly after that, I seriously wondered what the hell I was doing. I took dozens of free webinars. How to attract your ideal client, ditching the digitals in favor of physical products, how to fill your calendar for 2019, etc. I filled up half a notebook with notes and realized all the free webinars were basically spewing the same information I already knew from the other ones I had watched. It was time to put my money where my mouth was and invest in my education if I was really going to be serious about this. I signed up for Jenna Kutcher's The Instagram Lab in October and took Jenni Maroney's Money Maker course soon thereafter.

Jenna's course literally changed the way I use Instagram as a whole. I used to be a "scroll through and like it if I think it's pretty" type of Instagram user (and still am sometimes, tbh), but after taking Jenna's course I started using Instagram strategically with engagement at the forefront. I try to engage with my followers by asking questions on my posts, and I try to engage with those I'm following by commenting and following calls-to-action on their posts. I plan out my grid at least a few weeks in advance, and now I'm trying something new where I stick to a color scheme in my photos. These days, I'm also talking to the camera in my insta-stories and showing up in my feed a lot more than I used to. It has taken me 6 months to implement a lot of the different strategies Jenna uses in her course, and I am so thankful for the community she has built from The Instagram Lab.

Jenni's course changed the way I run my business. When I signed up, I chose the option with 3 one-on-one mentoring calls and it was so insightful for me to have someone to think out loud to and problem solve with. Jenni breaks down the best ways to narrow down who your ideal client is as well as break down your business and price yourself accordingly. She introduced me to my printing lab, gave me the best pep talk when I was in the hospital dealing with my blastomycosis, and is honestly one of the sweetest people I've ever had the honor of working with. Jenni, you da best. After taking Jenni's course, I started digging deeper into album design and knew I wanted to offer prints and everything morphed into what my collections are today.

I took the off-season this year to really work on my business, while balancing a myriad of doctor's appointments and waiting for lab results. For a while it seemed like the doctor's appointments were never going to end and that I was going to be stuck inside forever because there aren't many people in Wisconsin begging for pictures in the middle of a below-zero winter. I did a couple of giveaways in hopes of getting more eyes on my business, which really just got me more likes from an Instagram ad than anything else. I spent most of this winter longing for spring to be here to be honest.

And then Wisconsin warmed up, the snow melted, and everything was in full swing again.

Wedding season started, and from there it has been families and newborns and seniors, oh-my! I only need to book seven more sessions until my editorial calendar is filled for 2019, and about 20 more sessions to get me through until next spring. I am blown away by the support I have received both from my online community and my real-life one. My heart is so full of joy and overwhelming gratitude for everything that has happened in the last year (minus the blasto because, y'know).

I am now the girl that pulls out her laptop in waiting rooms to edit photos, and the girl that's glued to her phone writing copy for Instagram captions at the laundromat.

I am truly living the life I always dreamed of, and I will never stop being thankful for it. I can't wait to see what the next year holds for me and this little business of mine.

currently, june edition

celebrating that summer is officially here

living in this dress from shein

grilling out because a) it's summer, and b) we got a little charcoal grill we can use on the deck

craving strawberry lemonade and iced tea all the time

drinking coffee out of a new mug from vinyl heads custom designs

gearing up to take abby's senior pictures tonight!

pinning up a storm over on pinterest lately

watching schitt's creek on netflix

driving with the windows down and music up since I joined the 21st century and finally got a bluetooth transmitter for my car

planning a burlington trip in july... sunflower photos anyone?!

dancing it out to mat kearney

wishing y'all a happy monday!

of lace and pollyanna

Once upon a time, I used to take photos of the light coming through the lace curtains in the bathroom at my grandma's house. I did the same thing when I first moved to Waupaca with the upstairs window curtains. Something about light shining through lace will always make me nostalgic for the early days of everything when my heart went pitter-patter for a good shadow long before I ever learned how to use a camera to document it. I wasn't even a person yet—and by that I mean, nothing had broken me yet. I can still remember being probably five or six years old and laying on the floor in front of the kitchen windows, watching the long shadows cast through the curtains and the pretty golden light that cast rainbows on the floor thanks to my grandma's prism collection.

Anyone remember the Disney movie Pollyanna from the '60s with Hayley Mills? My grandma and I used to watch it together all the time. It was one of her favorite movies. There's a scene in the movie where Pollyanna and one of her orphan friends go to the neighbor's house and they marvel at his prism collection while he explained the science behind it.

"Let us make a garland and hang them in the window!" they begged.

He conceded and Pollyanna says, "Oh it's gorgeous! It's the most beautiful room in the entire world" while they watch rainbows dance across the walls in awe.

I adopted that same sense of awe laying on the floor of my grandma's kitchen. When I moved out years later, I inherited a small chunk of that prism collection. I hung them in the windows of my office in my first apartment and I used to lay on the carpet, face in the sun like my cats, and stare at the rainbows dancing their way across my brown carpet and white walls. It felt like my own little world—my own little slice of magic in everyday life.

Discovering what it means to be broken for the first time and trying to climb out of that kind of darkness is the hardest hurdle to get over. I used to hide in the bathroom as a teenager when I was feeling too much—school, homework, friends, parents, college, pressure. I would grab my little red Kodak camera and take pictures of the light streaming through the curtains to calm myself down. Something about light and shadow has always had a grounding effect on me.

Later, when MySpace became a thing, I wanted to do something different than just holding the camera at arm's length and click the shutter. I propped my mom's digital camera on the table by the garage, set the self-timer and started twirling in circles. That was really the beginning of my journey into portraiture. Of course my 365 challenge came after that, and I still felt the pull to capture light over people. I was just throwing a human element into the mix. My first "explored" picture on Flickr was of my hands dancing in the sunlight, testing the waters of light and emotion and the capacity of what I could create alone, just me and my camera.

All these years later, I can still feel that same pitter-patter and burst of inspiration when I see good shadows. Dappled sunlight and long shadows will always feel like home to me, mixed in with accidental rainbows and some sun flares for good measure. I will probably always be a geek over light and shadow. It's what pulled me through some of the darkest times in my life after all. I can only hope and pray that the magic of it all will never cease to amaze me. So far, we're on the right track.